Gary Kent has been a Labour parliamentary adviser for nearly 40 years, with a focus on Northern Ireland and Iraqi Kurdistan.
No disrespect to Sir John Major, but I suspect there’s only one road in a foreign capital named after him. That mark of respect is thanks for clear-headed actions that may be a distant memory or unknown here, but that made a decisive difference there.
The capital in question is Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan. Back in 1991, Major responded rapidly and radically to an upsurge of outrage in British parliamentary and public opinion about the plight of the Kurds after their uprising against Saddam Hussein.
Televised scenes of Kurds dying in the mountains as they sheltered from attacks by Saddam’s helicopter gunships moved the British public to collect vital provisions and demand action.
Major quickly embraced a policy of far-reaching importance. He set aside diplomatic conventions for a humanitarian means of preventing further genocide; he advocated a no-fly zone and safe haven over much of Iraqi Kurdistan; and he won the support of the Europeans and the initially reluctant American administration of President George HW Bush.
American forces had done the heavy lifting in expelling Iraqi forces from their brutal occupation and pillage of Kuwait and the President wanted his forces to return home. But Major persevered – and the US accepted the responsibility for the Kurds. British and American jets policed the no-fly zone for a further 12 years.
In a webinar celebrating the 30tth anniversary with Major and the Kurdish prime minister, I found a little nugget that symbolised the dilemma for America. The chart-topper at the time was the Clash song Should I stay or should I go?. I remember a wry smile from the former prime minister who persuaded America to stay the course after the clash in Kuwait.
Subsequently, the APPG on Iraqi Kurdistan suggested that its authorities name a major street after Major and it was readily agreed. As a Labour member since 1976, I never imagined I would have done such a thing. But it was well-deserved.
And so, you may be thinking, why should a veteran Labour parliamentary staffer for nearly 40 years be writing for ConservativeHome about this. It is because a bipartisan basis for an important bilateral relationship benefits both sides and British foreign and security policy.
This has inspired many fact-finding missions to the Kurdistan region over the last two decades, where many senior Conservative MPs have seen the fruits of Major’s démarche for themselves.
Chief among them has been Nadhim Zahawi, the son of a Kurd who was forced to flee Saddam’s Iraq as a child. In the early 1990s he was driven along a wadi by the current Kurdish president in a car with its lights off close to Iraqi tanks.
Zahawi took Boris Johnson, then Mayor of London, there at the height of the Daesh/ISIS onslaught on Iraq. Johnson was famously pictured holding an AK47 with the Peshmerga, the vaunted and brave Kurdish army that resisted the death cult for three long years and was decisive in destroying its caliphate in Iraq and Syria.
The latest delegation to Iraqi Kurdistan comprised Conservative peeress Fiona Hodgson and John Slinger, a Labour MP and APPG chair. It was the first delegation since 2018 due to British elections, Brexit disputes, and Covid. In the meantime, Iraqi Kurdistan has been buffeted by Baghdad’s hostility and Iranian pressures to suffocate a pro-Western entity.
We arrived on Baghdad liberation day, marking the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 – but senior leaders we met focused on the need for liberation from Baghdad’s punitive underfunding of the Kurdistan Region.
Total and partial cuts in federal funding according to a Barnett-type formula, and in line with the Iraqi constitution, have wreaked havoc and alienation. They are driving waves of irregular migration from Ranya, where the uprising against Saddam began in 1991. Helping overcome fraught relations between Erbil and Baghdad will help our allies in both capitals and help us into the bargain.
APPG delegations have also argued the need for thoroughgoing political and economic reforms to diversify the economy away from reliance on oil and boost the private sector. Successive governments have advised and assisted.
Having seen the ebbs and flows of Kurdistan since Major’s days, I have come to recognise that it has the resilience to survive and even thrive as internal and external conditions improve. The region’s recent, albeit delayed, elections have given legitimacy to its underdeveloped parliamentary system, and may yet mean a more united and determined approach to Baghdad.
The weakening of Iran, the end of the PKK’s disastrous war against Turkey, and possibilities for improvements for Syrian Kurds are positives that can help lift the siege of the Iraqi Kurds though none of that is yet certain.
Kurdish achievements would not have happened without Major. A fitting tribute to him would be a continuing interest by Conservative MPs in the plight and potential of Iraqi Kurdistan. Conservative parliamentarians could join delegations and see for themselves how a stronger bipartisan and bilateral link can advance mutual interests.
